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Barely a month after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, formally returning war to European soil and severely straining international relations, the former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd published a book on the tense relationship between the two global giants China and the USA. That work, The Avoidable War, has found special resonance in the new context we face today. Russia, led by an autocrat with an over-inflated ego and driven by nationalistic ambitions thought to belong to another age, has resorted to arms to impose its vision of regional order. Might it incite that other autocrat, the Chinese president Xi Jinping, whose absolute power was confirmed this autumn by his reappointment to the head of the governing Communist party, to assert his international claims more offensively? How can we avoid tensions between Beijing and Washington (over both economic and geopolitical issues, largely via Taiwan) degenerating into overt conflict with disastrous consequences for the whole world? This question is at the heart of Kevin Rudd’s latest book, which Justine Fernandez presents here in its broad outlines, alongside the various scenarios for the development of Chinese-US relations that Rudd sketches in the book.